Q&A: Filmmaker discusses documentary on Jewish identity
In Kathy Wazana’s documentary “They Were Promised the Sea,” Wazana explores the meaning of Muslim and Jewish identities, spurring from her own background as a Jewish person born in Morocco. On Wednesday, the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies will be screening the film followed by a discussion with Wazana. (Courtesy of Kathy Wazana)
By Hugh Defrance
Feb. 4, 2015 12:00 a.m.
Kathy Wazana left her home country of Morocco at the age of 10. Growing up in Canada, Wazana said she was taught that Morocco was a hostile place for Jewish people. Later she would make a film that would challenge those and other perceptions about the relationship between Jews and Muslims.
Wazana’s documentary, “They Were Promised the Sea,” explores the meaning of both Muslim and Jewish identity through its discussion of the Jewish exodus from Morocco, which began in the late 1940s, its focus on the stories of five Israelis with roots in Morocco and their individual relationships with their Moroccan heritage. The film also features the poetry and music of these people both to tell their story and to celebrate the potential for unity between Muslims and Jews.
The UCLA Center for Jewish Studies will be screening the film on Wednesday in 314 Royce Hall, followed by a discussion with Wazana. The Daily Bruin’s Hugh DeFrance spoke with Wazana about the film and her own experiences as a Jewish person born in Morocco.
Daily Bruin: What is the meaning of the title “They Were Promised the Sea?”
Kathy Wazana: The main character in the film is a second-generation Moroccan-Israeli, who makes the journey to Morocco. And in the course of that journey she visits her mother’s hometown and meets with Moroccans – both Jewish and Muslim. She says, (her) mother lived in Tétouan by the sea and they told them they would take them to live on the coast in Israel in Haifa. And instead they dumped them in the middle of nowhere in the desert, in a place called Dimona. There was nothing there, and even today there is nothing there.
DB: What was your original inspiration for the film?
KW: I was born in Morocco. I left when I was 10. We came to Canada, and for almost 35 years nobody in my family ever went back to Morocco. I grew up with the usual narrative of the fear of the Arab. And then I went in 1992 for the first time, and the first words I heard – and this is etched in my mind – I can still hear the customs person as I arrived in Tangiers looking at my passport and seeing my name, and seeing that I was born in Morocco, and of course recognizing that I was Jewish, and his first words were “Welcome home.”
I would say the initial impetus for this film was hearing about a village called Illigh, in the Atlas Mountains, a village where Jews have lived for over 2,000 years, side by side with Muslims. When the agents of the Jewish Agency came to take them to Israel, the population formed a human barricade to stop them from leaving. I imagined a hostile kind of crowd gathering, and instead it was a crowd of neighbors weeping, and pleading with them not to leave – as one of my witnesses in my film tells it – bringing them sweets and gifts and weeping at the sight of the whole village getting emptied out in one night.
DB: What role does music and poetry play in the film?
KW: Well the poetry is (by) Sami Shalom Chetrit. (He) is an Israeli Moroccan. He is also a filmmaker, a writer and a poet. His poem is called “A Mural With No Wall.” His poem is very important in the film, and maybe one of the spines of the film is his theme of dispossession and exile.
The music is really such an integral part of any story about Muslims and Jews in Morocco because the two are inextricable. We were lucky being in Morocco while a festival called the Andalusian Music Festival was happening that brought together a rabbi with a Sufi orchestra and two imams, and he performs with them. That musical collaboration is just a stunning moment in the film where they go seamlessly from praying to Adonai and Allah, and going from one to the other.
DB: In what ways has the response to the film inspired you or motivated you?
KW: It’s been an interesting roller-coaster ride because initially it was seen as being controversial and anti-Israel, particularly by some members of the Jewish community both in Canada and in the United States. But as I have been showing it more, and people have been coming to see it, the response has been absolutely amazing and extremely moving. Very emotional responses to it both by Jews and Muslims, North Africans, people from the Middle East and Palestinians.
Compiled by Hugh DeFrance, A&E; contributor.
